I had some of my own struggles but I really started noticing this more broadly in the last 2-3 years. I'm not sure if Covid did it, the end of ZIRP did it, or what, but there was a shift where suddenly almost every SE I would talk to seemed to be burned out. I can think of a lot of potential reasons but honestly the thing that jumped out at me the most is how almost in perfect sync it seemed to happen across the profession. It's a real bummer, I remember when SE was a pretty fun profession and people seemed generally pretty happy coming to work. (Maybe this was some kind of illusion though or I was just lucky where I worked at the time. I've heard plenty of death march horror stories from the old timers too.)